Ray-Space is one of the representation forms of 3D scenes that focuses on straight line rays passing through a 3D space. Rays in Ray-Space are commonly represented by five parameters: a position (x,y,z), and the ray's direction (θ,φ). However, these five parameters can be reduced to four parameters with a position (x,y) at which a ray passes through a reference plane z=0. According to the Ray-Space concept, acquisition of a view image is a process of sampling and recording ray data from rays that pass through a camera lens. The recorded rays correspond to a 2D subspace of the whole Ray-Space.
The concept of Free Viewpoint Television (FTV), whereby a user can manipulate the viewpoint of a scene displayed by an FTV enabled device, relies upon Ray-Space modeling. However, because it is not practical to capture a scene from every possible camera location (e.g., focal point) that a user might choose with an FTV enabled device, FTV therefore relies on Ray-Space interpolation to generate ray data absent from the Ray-Space. Such absent data typically corresponds to gaps in the image data for which no camera actually imaged a real view. Accordingly, the views for which no real image data exist must be virtually generated, customarily by Ray-Space interpolation techniques. Unfortunately, conventional Ray-Space interpolation techniques produce numerous matching errors and do not provide acceptable rendered views without advance knowledge of the scene. Having advanced knowledge of a scene is generally infeasible, especially in applications such as FTV.